Sunday, April 14, 2013

Still better when I do so ..About Steroids MS and finding out what happens to old school friends

So last week an old school friend of mine...(honestly we were never super special close kind of friends) ..yet he has told one of my family members that he never would have graduated from high school had it not been for me helping him LOL! ---yes we were in several high school classes together and throughout the years....(over 30 that I have known him now lmao) anyways.....we have crossed each others' paths over and over since back in the day......so last week he comes in the store and he is coughing....and I am all "Dude...never knew ya to be a smoker...but that sounds like a major smokers' cough you got goin' on there"...and he is all...."no..just a complication of a medicine I have recently been prescribed due to an illness"---and yep I'm having a bit of another "OOPSIE" (about my smart arse comments that he knows I have always been in his face about moments )...so we get to talking about it and the medication is "prednisone"..and he has recently been diagnosed with MSand I have to suddenly turn my back and wipe away some tears...I almost hate that the longer we are here on earth the more often we have to hear about our friends and peeps dealing with some not so good things..this kind of stuff is the type of thing that does creep up on us when we suddenly least expect it to do so---and when this happened to my 30 + year "life long friend" --the docs prescribed the steroid for the numbness that he has been feeling....so then he got cramps and huge charley horses...and they told him after 6 days to stop taking the steroids....and then when he saw me 2 days later he had this strange hacking cough....that sounded to me like a "T.B. long term smokers' lung in a hurt mode" smokers kind of thang....but the doc told him that this is also a "side effect" of the steroid....and he told me...."After the cramps and charley horses and cough......I'll deal with the numbness.....and I don't want to try any other treatment until the MS gets so bad that I can't stand it....the side effects of the drugs prescribed are worse than my symptoms so far"...So then I told him that I had been doing the same prednisone treatments for my arthritis for quite some time...and other than me noticing I am getting even a bit more "quacky tobaccy" every now and then ....(*especially when I take a muscle relaxant...at the same time as I am doing the steroid treatments......)at this point in my life.... the prednisone is the only thing that does help loosen up my joints and also puts a stop to a lot of the pain and stiffness in my hands...I almost think of it as how when you take your car to go and get a "lube job"----to me---that is what happens to my poor old bones when I do the steroid treatments every few months....I am soooooooooo very very thankful that I do not have these type of side affects...that my old school friend has just experienced...the older I get...my doc tells me not to make myself deal with so much pain....to simply take another pain pill yada yadahe knows that I do everything I can to try and prevent.....the "pills"...crap....anyone who has followed my story knows that I have been taking meds to deal with this since the age of 30.But hearing my friends' story about his experience with one of the same meds that I take.....all I could do was give him a great big hug.......maybe the steroids are not gonna be able to help him even though they did take away the "numbness" that he was feeling due to his MS....maybe the side effects of the steroids were indeed worse than the so called "cure"...but bottom line...I still believe that.....there will be something out there that will help him eventually as long as he believes in that.This is something I strongly feel.Several months ago when I had a couple of operations and my doc said "Doesn't this really hurt?" And when I told him "Not really..this is minor compared to the other stuff that I have dealt with for so many years"...I really felt that he suddenly understood....(because he wanted to give me more pain meds LOL!)But....I know at this point in my life that I obviously am very very lucky that I do not have the negative side effects from the short term steroid treatments....I told my Niece after he left...."OMG...this is one of those life moments....where we realize how lucky we are--- I take the same thing he does...but I am better when I do so"...........and I thank my lucky stars for the fact that I am indeed STILL "better when I do so"